Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

Ledger books, too! After all, she’d been Secretary of State, Revenue Collector, Supervisor of Accounts….

“ I don’t have a life insurance policy with Mutual,” she said. She patted the papers in the briefcase. “ This is my life insurance policy.”

Flipping through page after page, I could barely focus my eyes; my head was reeling. “It’s one hell of a policy, Alice Jean.”

“I want you to have it, Nate. I want you to take it.”

It was like I’d been slapped. “What?”

She closed the lid of the briefcase with a thud.

“I want you to use these,” she said coldly. “Use them to bring those bastards down.”

I gave her an astounded grin. “Alice Jean, I’m just a private operator. I’m in no position…”

Her jaw was tilted and firm. “Anybody with these documents I pilfered is in a position to do a lot of damage. They’re yours, Nate, to do with as you please-but not for blackmail purposes. I’m not giving you this material so you can make a buck. Promise me.”

And a buck could be made. Many bucks.

But I said, “I promise,” and I meant it.

Then I laughed, and shook my head. “You know, baby-Huey made a big mistake, putting a pretty young thing like you in such a position of responsibility.”

She actually smiled. “Think so?”

“Yeah. He should have stuck with dumb clucks like O.K. Allen and Dick Leche.”

She clicked shut the latches of the briefcase; put it on the coffee table on top of her movie and romance magazines.

I looked at her carefully as she settled back next to me on the sofa. I said, “Two things.”

“What?”

“You said there were two things you wanted to give me, before I left. That’s only one.”

“It’s pretty substantial, though, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yes. Pretty substantial indeed. But what’s the other thing?”

The cupie smile turned wicked. She began to unbutton the blouse and reveal the creamy slopes of her bosom overflowing the white lacy brassiere.

“Pretty,” I said, “substantial…”

Indeed.

We stayed there on the couch, and she kissed every bruise on me, and-for a while anyway-made all the pain go away.

A week later, back in Chicago, I was sitting at my desk in the big single room that was my office on the fourth floor of the four-story building at Van Buren and Plymouth. I was batting out another insurance report for Mutual, an investigation that had been far less troublesome than the Long case. But also less profitable.

Business was pretty good; I’d brought back two grand and expenses from my Louisiana excursion. I was thinking about taking an apartment at the Morrison Hotel; for too long a time I’d been sleeping on the Murphy bed in this office, playing night watchman for the building in exchange for my rent. After all, I was beginning to move up in the world….

When the phone rang, I figured it was that North Side bank wondering about the credit checks I was supposed to be running. I’d started thinking about putting on an op or two. What good was being president of a firm if you didn’t have somebody to boss around?

“A-1 Detective Agency,” I picked up the phone and said. “Nathan Heller speaking.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” The voice was male and tightly wound.

“Is that you, Elmer?”

“Yes,” Elmer Irey said, softly. “This package that came in the mail-are these documents legitimate?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d call anything about those documents ‘legitimate,’ but if you mean, are they for real, they’re for real, all right. Genuine pilfered files, records, what-have-you, largely pertaining to finance during the administration of Huey P. Long, and shortly thereafter.”

“Where in hell did you get them?”

“Where do you think? From an insider who got screwed over, and wants to get even.”

“I…I don’t see how I can use these in any court of law. They’re…stolen. Illegally obtained…”

“I don’t know anything about that. Anyway, you didn’t illegally obtain ’em. They’re a…” I laughed to myself. “…hell, Elmer, they’re a lagniappe.”

“A what ?”

“A gift. A little something extra.”

There was a long staticky pause.

“You know, Elmer, as a taxpayer, I kinda resent this cavalier use of long-distance.”

“Heller, I don’t know what to say…I had figured this investigation was over, but from what I see here, there’s no way even the Attorney General could stop it, now. But, damnit, I still don’t think these are admissible as evidence….”

“Maybe not, but they sure as hell tell you what’s been going on, who’s been stealing what, and point you in all sorts of interesting right directions.”

“That’s true. That’s certainly true….”

I leaned back in my swivel chair. “I didn’t go all the way through those. I’m no accountant. But I did hear some other rumors, only I don’t think they’re rumors.”

“Such as?”

I told him what Dr. Vidrine had told me about President James Monroe Smith at LSU, and about the building scams and misappropriation of WPA funds and materials by one George McCracken, whose current whereabouts were unknown.

“This will take some time,” Irey said cautiously. And then something unusual began creeping into the dour T-man’s voice: happiness. “I’ll have to be discreet. We’ll have to go through these records with a fine-tooth comb…but I do believe we’ll see some results.”

“Have fun.”

“Something I don’t understand, Heller.”

“Yeah?”

“What’s in it for you?”

“Jesus, I told you it was a lagniappe, Elmer!”

“It’s not like you, Heller.”

“Just don’t audit me, okay?”

He chuckled. “Not this year,” he said, and clicked off.

Irey was right: it did take a while; but in 1939, Seymour Weiss got a four-year sentence for mail fraud relating to a 1936 “commission” he received for the sale of a hotel to be used at LSU as a nurses dormitory. One of the codefendants in the scheme, also found guilty, was Louis LeSage.

Irey’s man John Rogge got Seymour on another four years of income-tax evasion, as well, but the mail-fraud and tax-evasion terms ran concurrently. Sent to the federal pen in Atlanta, Seymour was paroled in 1942, after cutting a deal to pay his back taxes.

Seymour deserved much worse, of course, but I felt Alice Jean’s thirst for revenge had been fairly well served: by 1940, the Long machine had crumbled-scandal, jail terms, millions in back taxes and court fines, a number of suicides.

Most of the Longsters landed in jail, fulfilling Huey’s prediction that without him, that’s where all his people would wind up. Dr. James Monroe Smith of LSU beamed cheerfully in prison stripes for the news photographers, before trying to kill himself in his cell. Governor Dick Leche resigned, in the wake of the LSU building scams and rumors of his own hunting-lodge estate being built with WPA materials; and Rogge destroyed Leche on the witness stand, getting him to admit to having made one million dollars in kickbacks while governor. Leche drew a ten-year sentence on income-tax evasion. He died in 1965.

Not everyone in the Long camp fared badly. Judge Fournet, despite being on the LSU board when corruption was running rampant, remained untouched by scandal. By 1949 he had risen to chief justice of the State Supreme Court. In later years, the once tall judge, now stooped with age, walked with a cane, because (he said) of the disc he ruptured scuffling with Dr. Carl Weiss in that capitol corridor. He died in 1988.

Murphy Roden had a long, successful career in Louisiana law enforcement, taking time out to serve in the Navy during the Second World War; he held high police positions throughout his life, eventually becoming State Police Chief under Huey’s brother Earl, and Commissioner of Public Safety under Governor Jimmie Davis. He resigned in 1962, citing poor health, including a bursitis-plagued shoulder.